I didn't do it.

LEFT - DR. CONNIE Mariano, a Filipino American doctor, has achieved historic feats throughout her career as she broke barriers and shattered the glass ceiling. She is the first military woman to become the White House Physician to the President; the first woman Director of the White House Medical Unit and the first Filipino American in US history to become a Navy Rear Admiral.


Someone was googling "Philippino immigrant criminals,"and the engine pointed my blog.

Obviously, the googler was not a Pinoy, or it could be a second/third/fourth generation Pinoy who didn't know how to spell Filipino.

Now thinking about it, I remember a Pinoy immigrant in Toronto who was nabbed for knifing and killing a co-passenger in the Metro subway about four years ago. The young man apparently was pissed off by the victim's glare, and an exchange of words escalated.

On the other hand, there was a young Pinoy boy, about sixteen, who was gunned down by the Toronto Police because they thought he carried a knife and was about to lunge at a policeman. The boy had a stone in his hand; before the police was summoned by an area resident, there had been a fight between some Pinoy boys and some Russian kids.

The police force had been sued by the parents of the boy, but the policeman who was not on duty and in civilian clothes at the time of the shooting, went scott free.

Then there was the unsolved crime of the Pinoy teen, Michael Santos, a student at the Marc Garneau Collegiate who was found dead in the vicinity of the school. Circumstances surrounding the crime pointed to murder, but the police ruled it was a suicide.

In the U.S., a famous crime which had been committed by a haf-Pinoy, half-American was the Versace murder. Andrew Cunanan went on a killing spree, and his last victim was the famed designer Versace. He committed suicide in a luxury boat before the police could get to him.

In Canada and in the U.S.A, anytime a crime or misdemeanor has been committed by an immigrant or someone with a mixed parentage, the media would not fail to mention the accused or criminal's ethnicity.

If the perpetrator had been a white guy, media would not mention his origins, (e.g . Irish-American, of Scottish descent, etc).

My former boss, a feisty lady from India, was at the forefront of fighting media stereotyping of immigrants into Canada, and one of the studies her group produced pointed to media's preference for this ethnic coverage.

But anytime an immigrant excels in sports, in arts, sciences or other fields, media would not bother mentioning the other half of the person's ethnicity. For instance, Americans don't bother noting that Tiger Woods is half-Thai, nor that Cristy Yamaguchi is Japanese-American. But Andrew Cunanan was splashed in the news as a Pinoy killer. Or that the guy who was gunned down in a hail of bullets by the New York Police in a building vestibule, who carried a cell phone instead of a gun, was a Haitian-American.

There are thousands of high achieving Filipinos all over the globe. The ex-family physician of President Clinton at the White House was a Pinay, the present chef at the White House is a Pinay, and there are thousands of medical practitioners working the hospitals in Canada, U.S.A., U.K. and other parts of the world.

Pinoys should be drumbeating instead of flagellating ourselves.

The recent hostage taking at the Quirino Grandstand, while it should not be forgotten, and should be the basis of credible change in policing, should not be a cause celebre among the opposition, and not to be used as a bullet to kill the changes which President Aquino had boldly begun and the growth potential which his two-month presidency has already shown.

I could not imagine President Barack stepping in on a bus hijacking situation, even if there were foreign nationals on board. He would have left it completely in the hands of his police force. And nobody would have questioned him.

The Manila police force fumbled big; there's an investigation going on. Enough of these "I'm sorry stuff" from the high ranking government officials, already.